Black-Eyed Stranger

by Charlotte Armstrong

  “You marked the money,” Alan said, and his tone added, of course.

  “No, I … did as it says.”

  Martha said, sharply, “Charles!”

  And he answered, quietly, “All right. All right.”

  Alan walked up and down, very much upset. But he controlled himself to speak moderately, even gently. “I’m sorry you didn’t let me in on it. I wish you’d seen fit to tell me. There might have been a chance. Professional people would have known what to do.”

  “Done now,” said Salisbury, bitterly.

  “Even this printing might tell an expert …” Alan stopped walking. “And fingerprints. Frankly, sir, I believe we must turn to the police. I can’t see there’s anything else to do. She isn’t here. It’s late. All this time lost. My men found Ambielli but—”

  “Your men found!” As it penetrated, Salisbury was lifted to his feet. “But I begged of you.”

  “It was obvious to me that you were both nearly out of your minds, not, as you say, thinking straight.”

  “You had no business …” Salisbury cried. “Didn’t you hear me beg of you?”

  “I ought to have been told about this note, sir.”

  “I told you that if they communicated …”

  “You didn’t tell me anything.”

  “You didn’t listen,” Salisbury cried.

  Alan looked hurt. “There is nothing to be so upset about,” he soothed. “My people simply located the man. No harm. They found the room where he stays. They’re quietly checking.”

  “No harm!” cried Salisbury. “I kept faith. But you, in my name, did not. It may be … It may be …”

  “Not at all. Ambielli doesn’t know he is being watched.”

  “How can you be so sure? What if he does? What if he thinks I was not alone last night. Somebody followed me. What if he thinks I did not obey?” Salisbury heard himself bellow. “Don’t you understand? She isn’t here.”

  Alan said, scornfully, “I can’t believe—”

  “Call your people off!”

  “If you insist, sir.” Alan was stiff. “But I think it’s unnecessary … as a precaution. And I think we need to know more about Ambielli. Especially now. As you say, she isn’t here.”

  Chapter 13

  SALISBURY dug his knuckles into the bones above his eyes. He looked at his wife’s white head, which showed a faint shimmer of motion, a continuing tremor. He thought, she can’t bear much more.

  “This hint about Ambielli,” said Alan, “is a fairly promising clue. The best we have until we find Lynch himself. I was bound to do what I thought was wise. For Katherine’s sake. Yesterday you seemed completely paralyzed and helpless. If you had trusted me.”

  “I had,” Salisbury mumbled. “Don’t you see that I had?”

  “These men are discreet. They’ve done this sort of thing. You just don’t know, sir. I’ll take the responsibility.”

  Salisbury said, sharply, “You can’t ‘take the responsibility.’ That’s meaningless. That’s a word. Done, now,” he snapped. “Let’s hope they are as discreet as you think. Can you reach them?”

  “I can, shortly. That is, they know where I am.” One of them will call. But I don’t agree. We must go to the police, sir, and I think you must admit it. It’s beyond you, sir. I’m sorry. That’s the truth.”

  Salisbury thought with swift sick self-doubt, the boy is right. I suppose he is right.

  “Not yet,” Martha said softly. “It’s barely time. It may be we aren’t counting from the same beginning. Not yet. You see, if they—”

  “Don’t, Martha.”

  “It doesn’t make much difference,” she murmured. “So just wait a little bit, a little longer.” Martha got to her feet. She said in breaking tones, “Don’t give up hoping. But I think I must go upstairs.”

  “Of course, darling,” Salisbury felt relief. “Yes, do. It’s best. Let me call Helen to be with you.”

  “Yes, call Helen. My nice maid, Alan. After a while, she can brush my hair.”

  Salisbury thought she was falling to pieces but then, looking into her face, he saw it was not so. It was only that she knew they would be stronger apart, just now. He could lean on her statement of hope. She on his. That was why she said, now, “When Katherine comes, Charles?”

  And he answered, gravely, “I will call you.”

  When she had gone, Salisbury threw out of his mind the cluttering self-reproaches. He felt free to betray his panic, and therefore, in the moment, free of it. He said crisply, “As long as your men have been checking, what did they find?”

  “I can tell you that soon, sir. They know where I am.

  “And what about Lynch?”

  “Nothing, yet. He is simply not around. And his car is gone. However—”

  However, thought Salisbury. Katherine may be in the most terrible danger or all danger for her over forever. However. “Go on,” he snapped.

  Then the phone rang. Phinney’s feet pattered in the foyer. Salisbury drew again that gasping breath.

  “For Mr. Dulain.”

  “Yes, thank you.” Alan strode. “This will be Warner.”

  Salisbury thought, I am wrong to go by the heart and the blood, which paralyzes. I was wrong to try to obey. You fight treachery with treachery, secrets with secrets, guile with guile. Maybe it’s strength in the boy to worry at a crack in the mystery, to dare to try. I am old. I am ignorant. Too stiff. Too cautious.

  Alan cried “What!” And his eyes turned in his startled face. Salisbury ran nearer, and to be running, in his own apartment, within these walls, on his own carpet, was in itself catastrophe. “Ambielli’s downstairs!”

  “What!”

  “This is Warner. Says this Hohenbaum forced him to go to Ambielli and he—And now Ambielli wants to see me!”

  “Tell him to come up … to come up …” Salisbury staggered.

  “I don’t underst …” Alan shook his head sharply. “Warner. Bring him up. Yes, both of them, then.” Alan put the phone down. “This I can’t … This I don’t fit in.”

  “What does it mean? What does it mean?” Salisbury thought, things don’t always fit. The world goes out of order.

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  Salisbury cried, “So Ambielli caught on to your man. Your discreet person.”

  Alan looked troubled. “But I don’t understand.”

  “You … you …” Salisbury threw his hands up. “You expect a hired man to be a tool, infallible like a chisel that won’t slip unless your hand slips. Your man, Warner, slipped, Alan. And what it’s done to Kay!”

  “It’s done nothing,” Alan said. “Ambielli hasn’t got her. If he has, why would he come here? It’s too bold. What could he gain?”

  “If he has,” Salisbury whimpered, “I must explain. Surely if I tell him, I kept faith. If I tell him to his face.” His words were going as wild as his thoughts. God’s mercy, he thought, Martha is lying down. “Mercy,” he said aloud.

  Alan said, pityingly, “Ambielli is not the type for mercy, sir. Don’t tell him much of anything. I think I can cover up what you are afraid of. Let me talk to him alone.”

  “No. No. No.”

  “It will be easy enough to show that we didn’t get onto him through the note, or anything that you did, sir. Let it be as it was. I never knew about the note. I’ve got suspicious of Ambielli in another way.”

  Salisbury took the brown paper and put it in his pocket. He felt dizzy. “Yes, all right,” he said. He was old.

  “You had nothing to do with my ideas.”

  “Yes. All right.”

  “Let me handle it. Watch him. See what you think. I don’t believe he’s got her. Because I cannot understand why he comes here. Yet, if he hasn’t got her, it makes no sense, either.”

  Salisbury said, “I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s not necessarily sensible.” He reeled across the room and sat down and shielded his eyes. A wheel turned sluggishly in his head. “You can’t tell him Lynch came he
re.”

  Alan moistened his lips. “Why not?”

  “Don’t you see? If this is the man … If Lynch was honest … If Lynch isn’t dead already … You can’t tell because then we would never find him.” Salisbury felt frantic.

  “Take it easy. Just—”

  “I don’t know.” Salisbury said. “How can I know?” He thought, or you either. Blind ignorant, both of us.

  But Alan had put on a foxy look, a narrowing and brightening of the eyes. “I think you’re right. No use giving it away, that we know about Lynch. When we find Lynch and make him talk, that may give us some pressure on Ambielli. Only way to deal with his type, sir, is by some threat.”

  Salisbury thought, Katherine is ill, somewhere. That’s all it is. We should check the hospitals once more.

  “Also, these people are perfect cowards, as a rule,” Alan said, “and one will rat on another.”

  Salisbury began to watch through his fingers for this Ambielli.

  Downstairs, Warner was turning from the phone.

  “Boss, I don’t think it’s so smart.” Baby looked as if someone had taken his candy.

  “No danger. Be quiet.”

  “Boss, they can’t tell you something they don’t know, can they? How can they?”

  “Oh, I think they’ll tell me,” Ambielli said. “Just be quiet.”

  Upstairs, as Phinney let the three of them in, Salisbury saw that the first was a rather small man in a decent dark suit. The second was a huge man who planted himself within the room and continued to shift his weight from one leg to the other as if to sink those great thick limbs into the floor. Last, came a thin man with sparse hair and a shrewd face and this one spoke. “Dulain. Ambielli.”

  “Mr. Dulain?” The small man had a pleasant voice.

  “Mr. Ambielli?” Alan held himself stiff and high and Salisbury thought, the little man’s amused. “You wanted to see me?”

  The little man ignored this. He looked down the distance to where Salisbury sat. “Our host?” he inquired softly.

  “Mr. Salisbury knows nothing about this,” said Alan haughtily. “I wish you had arranged to meet me in my office.”

  The huge man’s weight seesawed. “The boss wants to see you,” he growled. “You get seen.”

  “I came where you were,” purred Ambielli.

  Alan ignored the big man altogether. “Do you wish to speak to me privately?” he asked the little one.

  “That isn’t necessary.” Ambielli sat down. The big man came and stood, uneasily, near and to the rear of his chair. The thin man, who must be Warner, seemed uneasy, too. No one was easy, except the small man with the tan face and the white eyelids, who sat in the chair.

  “You wanted to see me?” Alan repeated.

  “If there is anything you wish to know about me or my affairs, Mr. Dulain,” said Ambielli in his soft voice, “I would suggest that you come to me directly. Baby, here, is very sensitive to indirection.” Baby growled. “And I, myself, don’t care for it. What was it you wanted to know?”

  What he was saying, even the manner of saying it, seemed to Salisbury quite businesslike and clear. Quite orderly. The only odd thing about the little man was the big man.

  “I wanted to know,” said Alan, “where you were and what you were doing on Wednesday.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Ambielli pleasantly. “So much I concluded. Now, if you ask me, I’ll tell you. If you tell me this first. Why do you ask?”

  It was clear to Salisbury that Alan wasn’t handling anything. There was a dimension to this little man that Alan did not sense. Alan asked what he had to gain, but there were shadings, here, of pride, even of curiosity, that Alan left out. Alan was now hesitating, clearing his throat.

  “Oh, come,” said Ambielli. “Obviously, something happened on Wednesday in which you think I may have been concerned. Let’s not waste time over the obvious. What happened, Dulain? And why me?”

  “Yeah,” the big man uttered his loyal growl, “what’s the idea?” But Ambielli’s hand stirred where it rested on the chair. The merest straightening of a bent knuckle, it was. But the growl died in the big man’s throat.

  This was, so far, the only odd thing.

  Alan put his ankle on the other knee and both hands on the ankle and he tried to smile boyishly. “It seems, some months ago, there was a shooting,” he began.

  Salisbury thought, no, he can’t do it. Not the casual relaxed stuff. Nor the silken threat. No, his picture of people, of other people, isn’t thick enough.

  “A man employed as a watchman by the Salisbury Biscuit Company was on duty near the scene,” Alan went on.

  “Oh, yes,” said Ambielli. “I see. You are speaking of the night I was shot. Go on.”

  “You remember?” Alan’s eyes thought they were gimlets, and Salisbury felt embarrassed for him.

  Ambielli laughed. “Naturally, I remember.” Salisbury still watching from beneath his hand, still at a loss to know what kind of creature this was, saw for the first time a wolfish flash. “And by the way,” said the little man in a pleasant gossipy manner, “I see where the same watchman was killed, only a few days ago.”

  Then he and Alan spoke exactly together. He said, “In an accident.” Alan said, “In an accident?”

  Ambielli smiled. “Why, I suppose it was an accident. Or so I read. Too bad. Of course, he was old.”

  The big man was stock still.

  Salisbury thought. It must mean something. Why so still? It isn’t evidence. It isn’t anything. But why so still?

  “I am wondering,” said Alan loftily, “if someone who … resented the watchman, now carries a grudge against Mr. Salisbury.”

  “This Mr. Salisbury?”

  It was too flip, too patronizing, too much of a sneer. Salisbury took his hand down. Didn’t this man know so well which Mr. Salisbury that he made a mistake, here? Salisbury was tense, where he sat, and his eyes felt as if they were bulging as he sought an intuition of the truth. He croaked, “Obviously.”

  “I beg your pardon.” The eyes flashed his way.

  Salisbury said, “Lots of men have money. Did you choose me for such a fantastic reason?”

  “I?” said Ambielli. His finger moved and the big man, growling as an animal might, obeyed, as a trained animal might have obeyed, and stopped growling.

  “Well?” said Dulain.

  Ambielli said, “What are you asking? Whether I have a grudge? It seems rather a thin notion.” Alan looked stiff. “Not yours, Mr. Dulain? No, I see. Grudges.” Ambielli shrugged. “Frankly, there was a time I may have felt angry with that watchman because he interfered. But such things don’t last.” Alan shook his own shoulders as the little man shrugged. “We recoup our losses and we move along. Stupid to dwell on such things too long. Don’t you find it so?”

  His eye shifted to Salisbury. It was cool and communicated nothing. Yet all this was too smooth, too obliging, even. There was a sneer in it somewhere. And something restless, some hunting thing, moved in this man. Salisbury cracked his fingers.

  Alan looked stiff and was silent. Then, Warner, the thin one, said, “I can tell you what they were doing on Wednesday.”

  Ambielli said, “Perhaps it would save time for us all if you would. Do that.”

  “They went out on Long Island, around one thirty, with an agent in the agent’s car. They spent the whole afternoon and up to eight P.M. looking at a piece of property. Roadhouse. The agent says so. The present owner, who was out there, too, he says so. Lawyer who met them there, three men working on the road, a cop who thought the place was closed and wanted to see did they have any right to be in there, all say so. I got dozens. They were there.”

  “It’s solid?” frowned Alan.

  “It’s absolutely solid. They were there.”

  “This,” said Ambielli thoughtfully, “was on Wednesday. What happened to Mr. Salisbury on Wednesday?” He really wanted to know. Salisbury was sure of it. This was a hungry curiosity, as if he needed to know.

/>   “Then they couldn’t …? These men didn’t …? It isn’t possible?” Salisbury blurted, his doubts churning.

  “There is such a thing as hired help,” said Alan Dulain. “Men of this type often arrange an alibi.”

  Ambielli looked much amused. “You’ve made a study,” he mocked, “of my type?”

  But Salisbury said brokenly, “Then you don’t know where she is? If you do, please … I kept faith. If you do, then you must have the money. Why isn’t she home? Why hasn’t she come home? I don’t care for anything but that. Let everything go. Just let her come home.” (He thought to himself, what a pitiful old fool I sound!)

  “Oh?” said Ambielli. “Someone is missing?”

  “My daughter. My daughter. My daughter.”

  “You had a daughter?”

  The verb, the tense of the verb, pierced Salisbury’s breast and tore his heart.

  “She was snatched, huh?” said Hohenbaum in what sounded like perfect amazement. Ambielli turned a trifle in the chair and looked at him. “What d’ya know?” said Baby. Ambielli smiled.

  Alan got up. “All right. That’s what happened. Wednesday. You’re alibied. Solid.” He tried to make it a threat. “Where were you last night, Ambielli?”

  “I, Mr. Dulain?” said Ambielli. The threat went the wrong way. It was the little man who was dangerous.

  “Warner, get hold of Reilly or somebody. Tell them to check on where these two were last night.”

  “It’s very interesting,” mocked Ambielli, “ to see how your type works, Mr. Dulain. Now, what could have happened last night?”

  He knows, thought Salisbury. Of course, he knows. But then, I told him. Is it this man? If it were, he knew all at once, there was no hope.

  Alan was saying, “Was it this man? Was it Hohenbaum? Mr. Salisbury!” Salisbury came to attention. “Is this the man who took the money?”

  Salisbury could not focus. “You had the impression that he was large,” nagged Alan. Now he could see the pouting mouth, the red hurt baby face. He shook his head. “How about his voice?”

  “It was falsetto,” Salisbury said.

  “Say something falsetto.”